Woman fired from job for working through lunch

[NUance]

Chicago Woman Fired for Doing Work at Lunch Wins Unemployment Claim

By SUSANNA KIM | Good Morning America – Mon, Jan 16, 2012 9:59 AM EST

Sharon Smiley had worked for 10 years as a receptionist and administrative assistant at a Chicago real estate company until she was fired for skipping lunch one day. After a two-year battle, an appeals court in Illinois has found that denial of her unemployment benefits was "clearly erroneous."

Smiley, 48, punched out of work for lunch Jan. 28, 2010, but remained at her desk to finish a project assigned by a manager because she did not plan to eat that day, she said.

Smiley, who had passed her 10-year anniversary with the company more than a month before, said another manager told her it was time for her to go to lunch and step away from her desk, but she refused. That manager observed Smiley working on a spreadsheet on her computer, answering the phone and responding to questions by people who approached her desk, according to a filing from the appellate court of Illinois.

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Sounds like my kind of company! I would not only take lunch, I would take the whole afternoon off. Just to give that extra bit of effort.

 

[fro daddy]

youd proabably get a promotion.

"NUance...we like you lack of putting your work before yourself. And most of all, your amazing at stepping away from your desk. The biggest factor in this promotion was the fact that you regularly leave for 2 or more hours over your lunch, and when we ask you to do something work related over a break how you always told us to, and i quote, ' shove it up our pieholes!!' You are the man to lead this company!"

"Now your first order of business is to rid us of those trouble makers who work on break"....

:lol:

 

[Lyons in the Sea of Red.]

I have a job on campus and they are like this. They get very irritated if you arent taking your lunches correctly.

 

[NUance]

youd proabably get a promotion.

"NUance...we like you lack of putting your work before yourself. And most of all, your amazing at stepping away from your desk. The biggest factor in this promotion was the fact that you regularly leave for 2 or more hours over your lunch, and when we ask you to do something work related over a break how you always told us to, and i quote, ' shove it up our pieholes!!' You are the man to lead this company!"

"Now your first order of business is to rid us of those trouble makers who work on break"....

:lol:

Ha ha! I could become president of the company.

Something tells me there's more to this article than meets the eye. Surely a company wouldn't fire someone for working too much. Surely??!

 

[NUance]

I have a job on campus and they are like this. They get very irritated if you arent taking your lunches correctly.

And here I thought this was a rare situation. I mean, penalizing someone for working through their lunch? That's just f'd up.

 

[knapplc]

Something tells me there's more to this article than meets the eye. Surely a company wouldn't fire someone for working too much. Surely??!

Likely she wasn't a very good employee in the first place, or she had pissed off the wrong person, etc. Fact is that companies pretty much never fire their good employees. Things are overlooked if you produce, exaggerated if you underproduce. Happens all the time in At-Will employment.

 

[strigori]

I have a job on campus and they are like this. They get very irritated if you arent taking your lunches correctly.

And here I thought this was a rare situation. I mean, penalizing someone for working through their lunch? That's just f'd up.

No, its strict adherance to the law, so they don't get in trouble later. There have been many companies **cough**Wal-Mart**cough** who had workers 'voluntarily' work through lunches, and even had managers clock them out. And overtime at most places is forbidden right now too.

 

[Cactusboy]

If it was a one time thing, or even few and far between, than this is ridiculous. However, in many or even most situations it's good for productivity if workers take breaks even if they don't want to. Just like a player may not want to come out of the game, but the coach knows he needs to so he's not tired in the 4th quarter.

 

[HuskerCarter]

I have a job on campus and they are like this. They get very irritated if you arent taking your lunches correctly.

And here I thought this was a rare situation. I mean, penalizing someone for working through their lunch? That's just f'd up.

No, its strict adherance to the law, so they don't get in trouble later. There have been many companies **cough**Wal-Mart**cough** who had workers 'voluntarily' work through lunches, and even had managers clock them out. And overtime at most places is forbidden right now too.

I got fired from Sears in 2004 for this. Yet my story didn't get posted on the news. Probably because we weren't looking at an economic crisis.

Apparently if you work more than 8 hours in a 24 hour period you are required by law to take a 30 min lunch break.

It all worked out though, i joined the Air Force 3 months later and Sears closed down that store on Fort Crook Rd. 4 years later.

 

[HUSKER 37]

I worked at an airbag (explosives) plant for awhile and they kept forcing me to take breaks.

I hated it..I was trying to give up smoking at the time and almost contasntly bombarded by 2nd hand smoke while on break..I use to only eat one meal/day because I usually only got hungry every 23 hours or so..

Thankfully we eventually got the internet and I used it to print news about Husker Football from the Wierd Herald 1300 miles away

 

[AR Husker Fan]

I have a job on campus and they are like this. They get very irritated if you arent taking your lunches correctly.

And here I thought this was a rare situation. I mean, penalizing someone for working through their lunch? That's just f'd up.

No, its strict adherance to the law, so they don't get in trouble later. There have been many companies **cough**Wal-Mart**cough** who had workers 'voluntarily' work through lunches, and even had managers clock them out. And overtime at most places is forbidden right now too.

Bingo. Generally speaking, non-exempt employees (which this certainly was) have to take the legally mandated breaks. If they don't, they can come back and accuse the company of not paying overtime or other compensation if the company knew or should of known of the practice. The company had most likely warned her of the practice - although I didn't see that mentioned - and she still did it. Regardless of that, though, the company was protecting itself.